Identity | The Direction of Intention

Give Yourself Some Advice (3)

Posted on April 11, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

A younger version of myself rehearsing for The Creatures of Prometheus. The tats are fake!

A younger version of me rehearsing for The Creatures of Prometheus with The Portland Chamber Orchestra. The tattoos are fake!

[continued from GIVE YOURSELF SOME ADVICE (2)]

Here’s the third and final section of Horatio’s Advice To Myself. He sent it to me in an email last week. Horatio is one of my dear companions in art and artistry and I was so moved by his words that I asked him if I might post his thoughts. Were I still teaching young artists, this would be required reading:

Do not make work that attempts to control others. That is only advertising or propaganda and sustains no one. Make work that connects to others. That is sustaining.

Do not make work that exalts yourself alone. That separates you from others.

Walking is good for you. Eating and sleeping are good for you. Loving is good for you. All those things sustain and heal you. Make your work like those other things. That kind of work is good for you, and for everyone.

Bragging is not good for you, or for anyone.

Never work in order to be famous or get rich. Never confuse your work with either one of those false goals, even though either or both may come your way.

Fame and riches are burdens and require a whole set of tools and abilities not at all related to the work that may have brought you fame and riches. No one but a very small minority of the rich and famous and a few visionary souls who are not rich or famous understand this. It may be the greatest false idol of human self-fulfillment of all time.

Time is the only asset that really matters. Value and prioritize it. You also need enough food and shelter, which usually means money. But enough is enough. That’s all that matters.

Having enough money for food and shelter is a necessity of doing good work. You have no choice but to figure something out. There are many paths.

You will make bad choices. Learn from them. Forgive yourself so you can make other choices. Keep pursuing the real work.

You will waste effort and time. You will do work you don’t like. Everyone does. Try again.

All good work contains a discovery, something necessary for human life, even if it’s only that you need to drink water.

All good work shows how we are all human, both you and your audience, that you connect, that you are the same.

All good work shows that it matters that we are all the same.

[to learn more about Horatio’s films or to read the complete Advice, visit www.Fidalgofilms.com]

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Go here for hard copies.

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Education, Identity, Perspective, Power, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: acting, advice, art, connection, connectivity, creating, creativity, discovery, sustenance, work | Leave a comment »

Give Yourself Some Advice

Posted on April 9, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Horatio as a young man

A few days ago I received an email from Horatio. He is an amazing filmmaker and gifted visual artist. We’ve wiled hours and days away talking about art and acting. He’s a treasure. His email was advice that he wrote to himself, the artist (what a great idea!) and with his permission, over the next three days, I will share it in segments. If you are impatient and want to read ahead, visit his blog or take a gander at his work at www.fidalgofilms.com. Here’s his email with the first portion of his Advice To Myself:

The evening after screening The Bath at Taos Shortz Film Festival in March, 2014, a very adept interviewer with the wonderful name Tamara Stackpoole (straight from Downton Abbey or Jane Austen?) asked if I had any advice to emerging filmmakers. My answer, as I recall:

“Let your teachers go. Just tell your own truth. Learn the craft – setup and payoff, three-act structure, and so on – and learn it well. But then let it go and tell your own truth, your vision. You’ll know it when you see it.”

When I woke the next morning, I realized that I had a lot more to say, and that it amounted to advice to myself. It follows:

You only can control yourself, which means your choices. You cannot control anything else.

Choose ethically, you will regret anything else.

The foundation of ethics is to respect others. Treat others as you wish to be treated. Be humble. Pride is the foundation of all the deadly sins, according to Dante and his mentor Virgil.

Your work is the essential ingredient of your life, an expression of your choices, your ethics.

Connection to others is the essential mechanism of ethics.

A reciprocal connection of human to human (parent/child, student/teacher, artist/audience, friend/friend, or lover/lover) is the basic means to give yourself to others and to receive from them, to further yourself and others.

You will always be learning and practicing that kind of connection. You will never be finished.

[to be continued]

Prompted by Horatio’s inspiration, I’ve started writing my version of Advice To Myself. It’s a great exercise and amounts to yanking the blankets on what matters to you. It begs the question: what will be your legacy? What might you write to yourself?

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Or, go here for hard copies.

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Gratitude, Heroes, Identity, Perspective, Power, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: advice, art, artistry, artists, connection, control, ethics, film making, relationship | Leave a comment »

Love Yourself Better

Posted on April 5, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

this one is from the archives. I painted this 10 years ago.

He said, “The current goal is to love myself better.” And then he added, “Not so much a goal but something that needs teaching from our own mind.” His statement begs a great question, an ages old question: Can the mind teach itself? Really, the question is can the mind see itself clearly enough to teach itself? Or, the question within the question: Can the mind teach itself to love itself? I scribbled the questions in my notebook and beneath them I wrote, “Is love teachable? Is love reachable through the mind, especially self-love?

We’d been chatting for a while and had covered a lot of territory, from Monte Blanc pens to typewriters to soap use around the world, clean water, the difference between good and bad scotch, the shapes of the 50 states and how they might influence personal identity and we’d somehow wandered into the epicenter: self-love.

His statement nailed the universal dilemma perfectly. It was a declaration of separation. The self watching and wanting more for the self. The separation is in the language: to love myself better. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t made this statement. Which part of the self will better love the other part of the self? Which part of the mind will teach the other to love?

It is where myth meets the everyday. Every human being who has walked the earth has wrangled with separation and the yearning for self-love (re-connection to self, unity). The human journey is a walk from separation (birth, if you want to take it literally) to reunification (death). The story lives in mythologies the world round. If we were still willing to read our mythologies (religions) metaphorically, we’d see it. For instance, being expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge is the story the ancients told of the experience of separation. The inevitable bite of apple from the tree of knowledge brought duality consciousness: male/female, us/them, mine/yours, haves/have-nots, me/you. Separation. The rest of the story, not often told, is how, through out the rest of our lives, we seek the Garden where there lives a second tree: the tree of everlasting life (unity). We journey from knowledge (separation) to everlasting life (reconnection). The death need not be literal. To die to the self is necessary to experience the SELF.

Here’s the great paradox: loving another person is an act of self-love. The path to self-love is found when we serve something bigger than our selves. Think about it: the movement is always from separation to joining, from isolation to connectivity. The obvious question is, “Connectivity to what?”

Self-love is not found when the mind teaches the mind but when the mind gets out of the way of the heart. The love is always there. Love is never missing. Self-love reveals itself when the definition of self grows beyond our own skin. According to our latest neurological science, we experience ourselves as separate because we dull ourselves to our fundamental connectedness to others. In other words, we cultivate a story of isolation and then set about the real work of our lives: to see beyond what we think.

And then he said, “You know what else I just realized?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I just landed myself in a blog post.”

Yep.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Or, go here for hard copies.

Filed under: Awakening, Body, Edges, Energy, Identity, Language, Love, Metaphor, Seeing, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: love, myth, self knowledge, self-love, story | 3 Comments »

Be A Team

Posted on April 2, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

can you see the team boosting the child? I have many of these and will soon begin intentionally pursuing this form

Many years ago Judy gave me a book by African writer Malidoma Some. He wrote that, in the village where he grew up, there were no locks on the doors. In fact, there were no doors. The people of the community respected the possessions and privacy of others. Locks were not necessary. The community cared for the health of its members so its members cared for the health of the community. From his point of view, a society that needs locks on the doors is a sick society. Locks are sign of communal breakdown.

I’ve been thinking much about sickness and the need for locks as I prepare to do a workshop for organizations about effective teams. I’ve done too many of these workshops not to recognize that the need to build teams is a sure sign of an unhealthy community. In Malidoma Some’s community, people were aware of and acted from a consideration of the health of the whole. Loyalty begets loyalty. “Acting for the good of the whole” is a great working definition for a team. It’s all you need to know to nurture great teams: make sure everyone in the organization, from the top to the bottom, is caring for the health of all the members. Make sure the choices are made for the good of the whole.

An organization that needs to team build is like a society that needs locks: most organizational systems support a philosophy of “every man and woman for themselves” while the executive suite needs cooperation and compliance to get the job done. No amount of team building can transcend compensation for individual merit. Once, a CEO asked me, “How do I get them to do what I want them to do?”

The short answer: you don’t.

A healthy team, just like a healthy community, requires no leveraging to act. It requires no policing. A team is a not a “thing.” A team is a relationship and just like a sports team or a theatre troupe, everyone needs to feel safe to really bring their game. They have to know the team cares for them as much as they care for the team. Many years ago, while sitting in a jury pool, the judge asked us, “Why do people resent being called to serve?” A lovely older woman raised her hand and replied, “The government offices are inaccessible and unhelpful when I need information or support. Why should I be happy to serve a system that wants nothing to do with me until it needs my money or someone to sit on a jury.” The rest of the jury pool applauded. When loyalty is a two-way street, teams form naturally. When loyalty is a given, people quite naturally offer their service to something greater than themselves.

There are a few other elementary things necessary for the relationship known as, “team,” like a common story (a common center) and a clear intention, but they are not possible when the metaphoric doors need locks. “Team” is something we are, not something we build or do.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Or, go here for hard copies.

Filed under: Business, Edges, Identity, Pattern, Perspective, Seeing, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: community, health, story, team | 1 Comment »

Honor The Split

Posted on March 19, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

after hurricane Katrina I was invited to write an illustrate a children's book. There is only one copy: the original went to a child displaced by the storm. This is the first plate. The book is called 'Peri Winkle Rabbit Was Lost.'

After hurricane Katrina I was invited to write and illustrate a children’s book. There is only one copy: the original went to a child displaced by the storm. This is the first plate. The book is called ‘Peri Winkle Rabbit Was Lost.’

Another of the revelations that tumbled through my mind yesterday concerned “splits.” I’ve written often about split intentions, a concept that the fabulous Viv McWaters encapsulated for me when she offered the Chinese proverb: Chase two rabbits and both will get away. Much of my organizational, educational and creative coaching life has been in service to clients who come to me when they have split their intention and are watching both their rabbits escape. I helped them unify their intention and, therefore, clarify their pursuit.

The dark side of the moon that I rarely talk about (and that came clear to me yesterday) is the necessity of a split intention at certain points in a process that make growth possible. The best example is the split that happens within a caterpillar’s body once it cocoons. The encoding for “butterfly” activates, the caterpillar’s body reads it as a cancer, and a battle ensues. A split occurs: to remain a caterpillar or to become a butterfly. Old systems do not easily let go so the caterpillar’s body fights and nearly defeats the inner butterfly intention. However, the resistance makes the butterfly code grow stronger and it fights back. This back-and-forth inner debate progresses until finally the caterpillar’s body collapses into mush (in story cycles, this “mush phase” is the step into the unknown). The mush slowly takes on a new shape and a new identity emerges. The final necessary battle is the newly formed butterfly’s struggle to exit the cocoon. Help a butterfly out of the cocoon and you will kill it; the final struggle is necessary for the wings to grow strong.

This necessary split plays out in humans, too. All change (all stories) begin when the main character (you) are knocked off balance by an event or an inner imperative. This is the moment of a necessary split intention: do I stay or do I go. After being knocked off balance we do the same thing that the caterpillar’s body does: we run to safety and grab onto what we know. We fight off the necessity of change, denying the imperative, grasping for the feeling of security we no longer possess. This is a necessary phase! This debate, running to the safety of home and hiding – and then walking to the edge of our known world and staring at the horizon – and running back home again, creates heat. It gets energy moving. This back and forth, this inner split intention is necessary. It makes the imperative grow impossible to ignore. It is the process necessary for the main character (you) to understand that what was once secure is now suffocating. The discomfort of the unknown becomes more attractive than the safety of the known because of this inner split, this tug-of-war. When, like the caterpillars body, everything goes to mush and there is no way to go back, the only way forward is to step into the present moment without form or identity. Letting go of the known, stepping into the unknown, is the beginning of reunifying the split. Stepping into the unknown is a commitment to a single rabbit to chase.

The split creates the heat necessary for change. At the right moment in every life story, just as in the caterpillar’s transformation, a split intention is essential. To rush through this phase is just as devastating as trying to help the butterfly out of the cocoon. Trying to eliminate the discomfort too soon is a sure way to stay split and ultimately kill the transformation.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Or, go here for hard copies (Amazon)

Filed under: Creativity, Energy, Identity, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: growth, Self Growth, split intention, story | Leave a comment »

Open To Belief

Posted on March 18, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

another from the Yoga series by David Robinson

I’m having one of those days ripe with revelations and have been scrambling to capture the insight ripples before they rush down my thought river, around the bend, and out of mind.

One of the ripples has to do with the “As if….” The “As if…” is a tool for actors, self-growth seekers, and human beings in general. For an actor, to act “As if…” opens the door to belief in a character. For the seeker of self-growth, to act “As if…” opens the door to belief in his or her capacities, as if they were a character in the play of their own lives. The “As if” serves as a bridge into a possible future when belief is hard to come by.

When I was younger, a favorite “As if” mantra imparted to me by adults was, “To dress for the job I wanted, not the job I was applying for.” In other words, dress as if I already had the job I wanted. In my case it was lousy advice because donning pants and shirts spattered with paint was not the ladder climbing attire they wanted me to embrace. For me, the elders needed a different premise beneath their “As if” advice. There was no ladder in my paradigm. Dressing for any job felt like self-betrayal on my way to soul death. Of course, years later, having lost my mind, I actually put on a suit and lace-up shoes to coach my first executive client. He laughed heartily as I writhed in my new suit. He advised me to show up as I am, not as what I thought he wanted me to be. Great advice! His quote, “You are an unmade bed and need to own it. It’s why I hired you – because you are different.” As if!

I’ve understood for years that people perform themselves. “As if” can be a kick-starter for a belief-filled performance. It is an illusion-seed that, when watered and tended, grows into the identity you wish to inhabit. In other words, perform the person you want to become and not the one you currently believe yourself to be. Invoke “As if…” and sooner or later you may start to believe in your performance. Sooner or later you may become who you imagine yourself to be. The roles we play are not fixed identities and much more fluid than we pretend! Becoming who you imagine yourself to be is called growth and requires a wee bit of acting.

One of my favorite lessons from the theatre is that character (the role you play, like Hamlet or Juliet) is not something you pretend, it is found in how you do what you do. Characters in plays want something; how they go about getting what they want reveals who they are. So, when building a character, swim upstream. The character will reveal itself through you (the actor) if you identify and take action: craft how he or she does what they do. Young actors have to transcend the notion that acting is pretending. It is not. Action and pretense are two different things. A musician does not pretend to play music and an actor does not pretend to play a character. An actor pursues intentions. An actor acts (thus, the moniker). Actions are the notes an actor plays. Hamlet is the consummate student. He seeks truth. He tests hypotheses. How he goes about seeking and testing determines what we see as a character.

The same might be said of you and me. A human being pursues intentions. We take actions everyday and so, perform ourselves. How we go about our pursuit reveals what we believe. When we have little belief and big, big fear, we have the option of acting “As if…” It’s a loop. “As if…” leads to belief and belief leads to “As if…” Life off the stage is just like life on the stage: it is a cycle of belief and dis-belief. “As if…” is an ongoing growth process. Imagination knows no outcome.

In a recent workshop, after remembering a favorite childhood game, a man in the workshop said, “My imagination opened me to my belief.” Yes. That’s it exactly!

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Go here for hard copies (Amazon)

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Identity, Play, Possibility, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: acting, As if..., belief, imagination, intention, pursuit | 1 Comment »

Serve Life

Posted on March 12, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Untitled by David Robinson

I’m writing language for a website. In the past my website reinventions felt like an exercise of the same old cereal in a new marketing box. This time it’s different. I am a new cereal and I’m not certain that I want a box. It makes a difficult task of telling people what I do when I’m fully invested in container resistance. As I wrangled deep into the night with clever but remarkably meaningless marketing language, I had two mini-epiphanies:

1) Last year, unlike the captain of the Titanic, I sailed my ship directly at an iceberg so that it would sink. I sank the ship with all of the fine china, the gold bars and diamonds in the safe, the furniture, the clothes and fine food. It all went to the bottom of the ocean. I wanted off the ship so why would I now build for myself a new ship? I didn’t bob around in my raft in the vast ocean spearing tuna and catching rainwater so that I might someday step back on to the bridge and do it all over again. What, exactly, am I building?

2) I have tried my whole life to squeeze myself into too small of a box (as, I suspect, all of you have, too). I have worn the jacket of coach, of facilitator, of teacher, of director, of actor and waiter and painter. I am none of these and all of these. I have made websites complete with testimonials and classes, nice pictures and e-books, workshops and retreats. The process of building a site is a two-agenda process: first, locate yourself in space and time for other people so that they might find you and, second, orient yourself toward other people’s concern so they might know why they should seek you. In other words, 1) this is where I am and, 2) this is what I provide. The pronoun is “I.”

What, exactly, do I provide? I am not a plumber or a pizza maker. Every marketing person I’ve ever known has advised me to brand myself. Brand myself as what? Brands are made up. A year ago on New Year’s eve, tarot woman told me that she didn’t see a career for me. Rather, she saw lots of expression. “Brand that!” I thought to myself. Last night I reasoned, “I am not a brand.” Neither can I reduce what I do to a pithy phrase or clever visual. That’s precisely why I sought an iceberg and sank the ship!

I’m an artist (a painter and performer) and I write. I like to write a lot. At the center of all that I do is…disruption or change or spirituality or transformation, words that sound great but what do they mean on the concrete, day-to-day experience of living. I deal in heart, intuition, and soul. Great. I hold people’s hands and walk with them into their dreams. I dive with them into their past so they might let go of their story and sit solidly in their present. I help them unbuckle the weight belt of their story so they might surface for air. Brand that.

To ask, “What do I provide?” is to ask the wrong question. This question will always lead to too tight boxes.

Joe sent me some links: short films of Stephen Jenkinson (The Meaning of Death and Making Humans). Stephen Jenkinson says that humans are made, not born. He speaks eloquently about the necessity of dying to our childhood – which means recognizing that our short lives are limited. That’s the recognition necessary to grow up. We can only really fulfill our gifts when we understand the necessity to serve life, not our life. We end. Life continues. Martin Prechtel writes of his community’s male passage rituals; young men learn that they can only serve their community when they recognize their mortality. The passage ritual is meant to bring them to the realization that they are finite. Only then can they understand the imperative to serve something greater than themselves: life. Tonight in the Taize service, Pastor Tom read a passage about losing yourself to find yourself. It is the same concept wrapped in biblical clothes.

Here’s what I want to say on my site: when you are willing to stop trying to save your life and ready to start giving it, call me. No box necessary.

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Go here for hard copies (amazon)

Filed under: Emergence, Identity, Random, Seeing, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: brands, passages, ritual, spiritual, transformation | 2 Comments »

Hear Your Words

Posted on March 7, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

[continued from EAT WELL]

Craig originally wrote a post about the boxes people construct around themselves and the alternative choice of creating a stage. After his post he challenge me to enter the fray and muck about with boxes and stage and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much I have to say – I’ve followed the thread for a few days and will probably keep following it for a few more. It’s a rich exploration!

Yesterday I mentioned that I had the opportunity to work with Skip’s Human Centered Design class at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. I tossed the group into several exercises and experiences designed to help them understand how people story themselves. Specifically, we took a look at language as the building block of perception. We captured on video portions of my time with the students so rather than write about it, here’s clip from the day. [Note: the real riches start about 2:30 minutes in but I thought the students questions might be of use to set the stage so I left it in the cut. They’d just completed an exercise of misnaming things]. Let me know if you find some juicy bits about the boxes we build around ourselves and our attempts to “step outside of the box.”

[to be continued]

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Go here for hard copies (it’s Amazon…)

Filed under: Awakening, Identity, Language, Perspective, Play, Possibility, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: language, play, self knowledge | 4 Comments »

Update Your Model

Posted on February 26, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

I laughed when I read this phrase on Skip’s Power Point presentation:

“All models are false. However, some are useful.” Alan Kay

I spent years of my life reading books built upon the thought models of thinkers, consultants, physicists, mathematicians, artists, business people and spiritual thinkers. None of the models was true. Many contradicted other models. Models are only useful if they help us make sense of our days on this planet.

Culture is a thought model. Travel to another culture and you’ll spend some time being disoriented because you will have entered a different model for sense making. For instance, some cultures/models place the accent on the individual and others place it on the group. I come from a culture that celebrates the individual and my world was rocked in a culture that celebrates the group; the model was so different that I could not sense make anything and fell head long into “not knowing.” While stumbling about unable to make sense of the world, I saw my own cultural model for what it is: a useful model – not truth.

Art, in most of Western culture, is considered important if it breaks or disturbs the model. In most Eastern cultures art is considered important if it supports the model. Neither is truth. Neither is right. Both are useful for sense making if you understand the model.

Language is a model. It is very useful model, wouldn’t you agree? Wade Davis is sounding an important alarm that is going mostly unnoticed: we are losing languages faster than species are going extinct. Each language lost is more than a lost collection of words; a language lost is an entire world lost. It is a mythology lost. A language lost is a way of seeing and engaging with the mystery that is lost. What is useful and unknowable (un-see-able) to other languages/models is lost forever.

Religion is a model. Science creates and constantly revises its models. Religion could learn a thing or two from science (and vice versa). Maps are models. For a terrific book on mind models, get Charles Hampden-Turner’s, Maps Of The Mind.

A study of history is a study of models that served as sense makers for a time but collapsed under the weight of updates. For instance, no explorer ever sailed off the edge of the world despite the unassailable model of the day. It turns out that the sun does not rotate around the earth though many people were hushed and crushed for going against the model of their day. Newton showed us that space and time were fixed and Einstein showed us that space and time are not only fluid but connected.

We get into trouble when we confuse our models with truth. No model is true. No model is right. This applies especially to the models that we carry within us: the mind models that lead us to believe that, “I can’t do it…” are false. My favorite model that is mistaken for truth shows up like this: “I’m not creative.” That is a model that is both false and not very useful. What might you need to do to reconsider your model and accept an update?

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Go here for hard copies

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Identity, Language, Metaphor, Seeing, Truly Powerful People, Uncategorized | Tagged: creativity, mindmap, mindset, models | 3 Comments »

Where’s Your Safety?

Posted on February 21, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

from my Yoga series

Bill said, “People must make time to smell the roses.”

We were talking about the stories, specifically the stories we tell that become self-made prisons. “It’s never made any sense to me!” he laughed, “I’ve never been able to work for anyone because the whole mindset seems like madness. For instance, I just talked to a man who believes he must work at his job for three more years so he might have a better retirement. He hates his job!” He added, “I have a dear friend that sat down after a game of tennis and died of a brain aneurism. We never know, do we?” His question was actually a statement and I nodded my head in agreement. It’s never made any sense to me to give away this day of life for an idea of life in the future.

“Why do you think people do that?” he asked. Social norms. Expectations. Fear. Stability. There are many reasons. There are many good reasons. We have to feel safe. I used to tell groups that a child can’t play unless he or she feels safe. To the man holding on for retirement, trading today for a possible tomorrow makes him feel safe and a safety story is a necessity in a culture that has forgotten community. Without a tribe, people must fen for themselves and the sacrifice they make is their autonomy. It’s a paradox. It’s a story.

Bill and I tell a different story. I’m a terrible employee. I have too many ideas. I like to change things. I do my best work late at night or very early in the morning. The middle of the day, the normal working hours, are down time. Fog time. I feel safe by breaking patterns and changing rhythms. I feel safe when I don’t know what is coming. I value presence and feeling alive much more than retirement. I do not know what retirement means because my job has never been a thing that I do. To retire means to die. I’ll certainly do that someday but I see no reason to save up for it.

My story, my path is no better or worse than the man who gives up his today for tomorrow. We both create our idea of security and live from a set of assumptions that define a good life. We both make sense – we make it. Sense is not found like happiness is not found. Both ensue.

Bill looked at me and said, “Maybe asking why people give away today for tomorrow is not the right question. Maybe the right question is, ‘Do they know that they are making a choice?”

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Go here for hard copies

Filed under: Identity, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: artistry, choice, self knowledge | Leave a comment »

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